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Aunt Mary came by this week to meet Eliza Jane and she asked, incredulously, "Did you hear about the woman in Florida who gave birth in the hospital parking lot?! The security cameras caught it on video!"
No, I hadn't heard about that woman, but if we had waited 10 more minutes I would have BEEN that woman.
The clock struck midnight on her due date, May 23, and Eliza Jane started her descent into the world. I had contractions all night and managed to keep it to myself until about 6am. I informed JB she would be arriving that day, we took a minute to acknowledge the significance of this, went through a list of things we needed to do to get ready, and the adrenaline (for him) and oxytocin (for me) started pumping.
Probably the best decision I made about this birth was to invite my friend Shannon, who is trained as a doula, to help me with labor. She was awesome. When Benjamin was born, JB was able to focus all of his attention on helping me, but this time, with B around, we needed someone to play with him the whole day too. JB's parents arrived to help mid-way through the day and by then I was thankful to have both JB and Shannon for support as I labored. The contractions were coming at a steady 8-10 minutes apart until about 3pm. They were bearable enough that I felt, quite frankly, bored.
At around 4 the contractions were steadier, longer, and harder, and we called Christy. She said she'd come over to check me before we went to the hospital. After one more contraction, I told JB to call her back and tell her we were going right to the hospital. What if I had not acted on this intuition?
By the time we pulled up to the entrance of the hospital the contractions were so close I could barely make it to labor and delivery. As a nurse described it later, JB and I "waltzed" in the doors to labor and delivery, with my arms around his neck. My water broke right there at the door, he wheeled me into the delivery room, and I made it as far as the bathroom when I started feeling the baby coming down the birth canal.
JB remembers having two thoughts almost simultaneously: "Oh my God, she's ready to deliver the baby" and "Oh my God, there's our baby!" Fifteen minutes after getting to the hospital, Eliza Jane was born in one push as I stood up in the bathroom of the delivery room. Christy arrived just in time to catch her (literally) as Eliza sped out of the womb. Christy didn't even have time to get her gloves on.
It all happened so fast I didn't have time to process what was going on as it happened, so the memory is a blur. Much more so than Benjamin's birth, which took long enough that I have clear pictures in my mind of each stage.
Eliza Jane is a healthy 8 pounder and despite being a biting barracuda, has managed to get plenty of milk and didn't even lose weight in the first few days of life. Tomorrow she will be three weeks old. We've been blessed with visitors for much of that time. What a help they have been as we've adjusted to having a newborn. JB and I can't really remember Benjamin's first two weeks of life at all, and I kind of hope that we forget many parts of these first two weeks of Eliza's life too : ) I'll leave reflection on these last few weeks until I've had a little more distance from it.
